A few years ago I was invited to participate at a gender studies conference at a university in Denver. In the sponsoring professor’s introductory remarks, he explained that no one could determine his gender just by looking at him. To arrive at the correct conclusion, he insisted, they would have to get to know him, hear his story, and come to learn what he was about. This is gender theory 101, and all the students nodded in agreement. I considered raising my hand to ask if I could chance a wild guess at the answer, but I refrained.
After this introduction, the professor began the first talk of the day. It was truly a very good lecture on sexism in advertising, one that was, in essence, so conservative that it could have been given where I work, at Focus on the Family. His—I’m being presumptuous here—talk showed example after example of how women were portrayed in advertisements as sex objects while men were portrayed as the consumers.
